Is Zoom Hogging Your PC’s Resources? Try These Tips and Tricks

Video meetings have become a way of life in a work-from-home, social distancing world, and Zoom has become the video conferencing platform of choice for many users and organizations. Zoom offers much higher quality audio and video than other solutions, as well as a wide range of features, such as screen and content sharing, messaging, annotation, recording, and more.

Zoom enables high-quality meetings because it’s not strictly browser-based. It uses your computer’s resources to handle a lot of the audio and video processing. The downside is that this can cause high CPU and memory usage, particularly with entry-level computers and those that don’t have a dedicated graphics card.

Under most default settings, people will notice that their computer runs really hot when they’re attending a Zoom meeting. They’ll hear the fan spinning up and other applications will not respond as quickly while they’re on the call.

Zoom Optimization Tips
Some people recommend that you close other applications while using Zoom and avoid high-bandwidth activities such as uploading and downloading large files, streaming video, and synchronizing cloud storage. However, that’s not always feasible and it won’t necessarily solve the problem.
Rahi’s A/V experts have extensive experience in the design, implementation and support of the Zoom platform. They have identified the following settings and adjustments that can make your Zoom meeting perform better.
On average, implementing the following changes a 30 to 40 percent reduction in CPU usage could be observed. The more people are in the higher the observed reduction in CPU usage.

Open the settings of the Zoom app and change the following settings under the individual sections described:

• Video:
  Change Aspect Ratio from ‘16:9’ to ‘Original’
  Uncheck ‘Enable HD’
  Uncheck ‘Mirror my Video’

Uncheck ‘Display up to 49 participants per screen in Gallery View’

• Audio:
  If you have a headset with a good microphone then:
  Go to Advanced Settings
  Select ‘Disable’ under the Suppress Persistent Background Noises’

• Virtual Background:
  Disable the use of virtual background if at all possible.
• While in a call:
  Make sure to stay in speaker view instead of gallery view. This has the least amount of impact but does make a little bit of difference.

People prefer Zoom for video conferencing because it delivers such high quality, but that quality can come at a price of poor computer performance. However, a few simple adjustments may be all it takes to minimize CPU and memory usage during Zoom video meetings.

Additional Resources
Click here for our video on tips and best practices for optimizing your appearance in video calls:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRBY4kMXLfE&list=PLhfkAkrjj1fjFXn2RKw1CsQJ7zcOJgtBR&index=6

Click here for our video on seven best practices for secure remote meetings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4zZQ0-HtUk&list=PLhfkAkrjj1fjFXn2RKw1CsQJ7zcOJgtBR&index=5